How to Find Deleted Reddit Comments

Saw "[deleted]" right where the good part of the thread should be? Here is what still works for reading deleted and removed Reddit comments, what does not, and why.

You open a Reddit thread, scroll to the comment everyone is reacting to, and it just says [deleted]. Or [removed]. The replies make it obvious something interesting was said, but the comment itself is gone.

The good news: a deleted Reddit comment is often still readable somewhere. The bad news: most guides online still recommend tools that stopped working years ago. This guide covers what actually works now, in the order worth trying.

First, [deleted] and [removed] are not the same

The label tells you who took the comment down, and that changes where you should look.

[deleted] means the author deleted it themselves. Reddit no longer has the text available to anyone, including moderators.
[removed] means a moderator, AutoModerator, or Reddit's own filters took it down. The author can often still see it on their profile, and moderators of that community can still read it.
[deleted] as the username, but the text is still there means the person deleted their whole account, not the comment. Deleting an account does not delete the posts and comments, so the text stays up with no name attached.

If you only see a missing username, you don't need any tool at all. The comment is right there.

Step 1: Check the places you already have

Before reaching for archive sites, check the copies that may already be on your own devices. These work even for comments that no archive caught.

Email notifications. If the deleted comment was a reply to you and you have email notifications on, the email usually includes the text of the reply. Emails don't change when the comment is deleted.
Your phone's notifications. Push notifications for replies show a preview of the text. If you haven't cleared them, it is still sitting in your notification list. Android can also keep a notification history if you turn it on in settings.
Replies that quoted it. Redditors often quote the comment they are answering, using a > line at the top of their reply. Read the replies under the [deleted] comment closely, and the important part is often repeated word for word.
An open tab. If the thread is still open in a tab or in the app from before the deletion, don't refresh it. Copy the text or take a screenshot first.

Step 2: Search Arctic Shift (the one that works best right now)

Since Reddit locked down its API in 2023 and the old Pushshift service was restricted to moderators, Arctic Shift has become the main public archive of Reddit. It saves posts and comments shortly after they are posted, then checks them again about a day and a half later. If a comment was deleted in between, Arctic Shift keeps the original text and simply marks it as deleted later. That covers comments deleted by their authors, comments removed by moderators, and comments removed by Reddit itself.

To look up one specific comment:

On Reddit, open the deleted comment's own link. On desktop, click the comment's timestamp. In the app, tap Share and then Copy link.
Go to the Arctic Shift search page.
Choose ID Lookup, paste the link into the box, and run the search.

To see every archived comment in a thread, choose Comments Search and paste the post's ID into the Link ID field. The ID is the short code after /comments/ in the thread's address, for example 1abc2de in reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1abc2de/. If you know who wrote the comment, put their username in the Author field instead to see everything they posted in that thread.

A few things Redditors who use it regularly point out:

Edited comments too. Because the first copy is saved right after posting, Arctic Shift often has the original wording of a comment that was later edited, including comments overwritten with gibberish by mass delete tools.
Keyword search has a catch. You can search comment text, but only together with a subreddit, an author, or a thread. You can't search all of Reddit for a phrase at once.
It isn't complete. Comments deleted within seconds or minutes of posting can slip through before the first capture. Private and quarantined subreddits are not archived. When the archiver has an outage, there are gaps until it catches up.

Step 3: Try PullPush and its undelete viewer

PullPush is another community archive that started as a replacement for Pushshift. Its undelete viewer shows a whole thread with removed and deleted comments filled back in, which is easier to read than a list of search results.

To use it, take the thread's address and swap www.reddit.com for undelete.pullpush.io, keeping the rest of the address the same, the way the old Unddit viewer worked. If the format has changed, the viewer's own front page explains what to paste. It runs behind a browser check, so give it a few seconds to load.

Two caveats. PullPush is not an official or Reddit-approved service, and some long-time moderators warn that it does not follow Reddit's data API terms, so don't rely on it for anything important. It also goes slow or offline from time to time. Treat it as a second opinion when Arctic Shift comes up empty.

Step 4: Use Reveddit to see what moderators removed

Reveddit answers a slightly different question: what did moderators remove? Reddit doesn't tell you when a moderator removes your comment. It still looks normal to you, while everyone else sees [removed].

Open Reveddit and enter your username to see which of your own comments were removed, and when. You can also look up a subreddit or a single thread to see how much was taken down. It is the best way to check whether your comments are actually visible to anyone. It is less useful for reading other people's deleted comments, which is what Arctic Shift and PullPush are for.

Step 5: Check web archives for popular threads

If the thread was big, someone may have saved a snapshot before the deletion.

Wayback Machine. Paste the thread's address into web.archive.org and pick a snapshot from before the comment disappeared. Also try the same address with old.reddit.com instead of www.reddit.com, because the old design archives with comments included far more often.
archive.today. Search for the thread's address at archive.ph. People often archive heated threads there precisely because they expect deletions.
Screenshots and reposts. Search the thread title, or a quoted phrase from the replies, on Google and on social media. Drama threads tend to get screenshotted and reposted in other subreddits within hours.

Skip Google's cache. Google retired its cached page feature in 2024, so guides that tell you to click "Cached" in search results are out of date. Removeddit, Unddit, Ceddit, and Resavr are gone too, even though plenty of articles still list them. Removeddit's old address now points to an unrelated gambling site, so don't enter anything there.

Why a moderator could see your deleted comment

This comes up constantly: someone deletes a comment and a moderator quotes it back to them anyway. Moderators don't get a secret undelete button. They use the same public archives described above, they get a copy through moderation tools when a comment was reported or filtered, or they simply saw it before it was deleted. If a comment existed for more than a few minutes, assume a copy of it exists somewhere.

If you want your own old comments gone

The flip side of all of this is that deleting a comment doesn't erase it from the archives. If you want your history removed:

Arctic Shift has a removal request form linked from its project page on GitHub, where you can ask for your username's content to be removed.
Delete comments individually before you delete your account. Deleting only the account leaves every comment in place with [deleted] as the author.
Search your username on the archives afterwards to confirm the removal went through.

Use it fairly

Reading a deleted comment for context, checking whether your own comments are being removed, or saving evidence of harassment are all reasonable. Digging up something a person deleted in order to embarrass or target them is not. When you do find what you were looking for, think about whether sharing it actually needs to happen.